Misleading headlines about dead teachers drum up fears about in-person schooling If you just read the headlines, you would think teachers are getting sick while teaching this fall and then dying from the coronavirus. If you read closer, though, you see that’s not happening. Teaching children in person hasn't proven deadly this school year. For instance, one PBS story this week discussed the deaths of four school teachers in an article suggesting, “the return to in-person classes will have a deadly impact across the U.S.” The Washington Post uses the deaths of six teachers to tell a tale of “fears that school campuses will become a breeding ground for the virus.” What these stories have in common: There’s no evidence that any of the teachers mentioned contracted the virus while teaching. The PBS story begins with the tragic death of a 34-year-old middle school special-ed teacher with asthma in Missouri. The teacher died Sunday and had been in the hospital for three weeks, meaning she fell ill before Aug. 16. School in Missouri started on Aug. 24. While PBS reports that the teacher had been in the school building to prepare for the school year, the story also reports, “Superintendent Alex McCaul said contact tracing determined she had no close contact with any teachers, students or staff." “It’s unclear where [she] picked up the virus.” An Oxford, Mississippi, middle school teacher and football coach died Aug. 6. He “was self-quarantining when teachers and students returned to the classroom, said Lafayette County School District Superintendent Adam Pugh.” While he practiced with football players over the summer, “an investigation found no new cases linked to him." Another Mississippi teacher who passed away, and is mentioned in the story, is reported to have contracted the virus at church. A South Carolina teacher who died Aug. 31 was teaching remotely, in a district that didn’t have in-person learning. The Washington Post story includes those four cases plus two others. A Des Moines teacher who died was in an all-virtual district, and he died before the school year began. One Oklahoma special-ed teacher fell ill before the first day of school, never got to show up to teach, was diagnosed with COVID-19, and died of a heart attack two days after classes start. Her husband also had the coronavirus. So we have six coronavirus deaths of teachers. All sad. But it seems that all of them caught the virus while doing something other than teaching. This doesn't mean no teachers are getting sick. In some districts, there have been multiple positive cases. It also doesn't mean that there will be no school-related deaths. It just means that the headlines are telling a story, that teaching has already killed teachers this school year, that isn't even close to being true.
Tsing....you only see the world through your little scope of what is happening down the block from you....there are schools where they just dont have the resources to do half virtual and half in person or 100% in person and make it safe just yet.... You cannot claim everyting is just techer union bullshit or DNC plans...schools are making their own decisions on this within their own communities and not by political party. Many schools are doing a hybrid but that is taking a lot of resources and the ones that rushed in to full populaiton (public schools) are facing new issues in many states where there are lots of capcity issues. Just keep an open mind. I am in favor of hybrid to start but not every school has the ways and means.
85, you must think I'm some sort of redneck living in a trailer who judges the entire world from what I see when I step out my screen door and on to the deck overlooking my corn field. All of the articles showing "teachers" that have supposedly contracted COVID we're not related to re-opening of school. I posted the background on those teachers. I also posted the data showing the cases in college, by college, and showing how there were ZERO hospitalizations. Lets us also not forget that I posted the demographic data behind the deaths in COVID that show that anyone under 65 has a .4% chance of actually dying from the disease (.004) and how this relates to the garden variety of the flu. I then (in this thread) also posted statistics on depression and anxiety, as well as articles on the head of the CDC and other folks talking about how schools must open, as the down side of not doing so is worse than the virus risk. All the data supports my side of the story, but I'm the local yokel who won't accept the world's reality? I gotta admit to being amused by all this.
Covid-19 cases among Florida children jumped 26% in a month. It's still hard to know which schools are safe https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/14/us/florida-children-covid-cases-schools-data/index.html Since many Florida public schools opened their doors about a month ago, the number of children under 18 who have contracted Covid-19 statewide has jumped 26%, state data show. Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to push for in-person instruction across the Sunshine State. Even though his administration has released county-level data that indicates the 26% jump, it has not released school-level Covid-19 data for all K-12 public schools, which CNN began asking the state Department of Health for on August 31. On September 2 -- nearly two weeks ago -- state officials said by email the data would be released in the coming days and weeks. But still, the state hasn't provided this key information. To deal with this information gap, some school districts have created their own Covid-19 data dashboards or released coronavirus case numbers on social media pages or their websites. While useful in those jurisdictions, the overall result is a patchwork of data that varies in completeness and timeliness by district at a time when students, parents, teachers and administrators are making tough decisions about whether to opt for virtual or in-person learning. It's a problem that reverberates across the US as the White House and federal agencies come down hard in favor of reopening schools but often fail to give reliable information to those on the front lines. On campus, 'people were breaking the rules' Florida began reopening schools August 10. On that day, 42,761 children under 18 statewide were infected with the coronavirus, the state Department of Health reported. That week, nine of 12 school districts opening their doors were in counties with positivity rates above 5%, the uppermost threshold recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for schools to offer in-person learning. CNN confirmed the list of districts that planned to open as provided by an attorney for the Florida Education Association and confirmed positivity rates with the Florida Department of Health. One month later, 53,717 Florida children have tested positive for Covid-19, with a positivity rate of 14.3%, statewide data show. In Martin County, the positivity rate among children tested is 20.5%, according to the latest state data. Reese Richardson started seventh grade in person on August 11 at a Martin County public school. But after about a week and a half, she decided to switch to virtual learning. "Kids were taking off their masks," Reese said. "They were touching. They were close in the halls. People were breaking the rules." The Martin County School District is one of those districts that releases its own Covid-19 data via the news media. One day after reopening, an entire classroom was placed under quarantine. A month later, it has reported 23 positive or presumed positive cases and has quarantined 510 students. The district has 16,500 K-12 students. Lindsey Tarpley appreciates the transparency from the district, she said. She works for the Martin County School District, and her children, ages 10 and 5, attend Jensen Beach Elementary School in the county. "I use that information to make a decision for them to attend school," Tarpley said. But Jill Richardson, Reese's mom and a former teacher, wants more transparency from the district and the state. "I don't feel like I'm getting up-to-date or accurate numbers," Richardson said. District-level data varies in detail At least 1.1 million students were participating on August 31 in in-person instruction, the state Department of Education tweeted that day. But the data available to students and parents about the Covid-19 situation in their schools still varies from district to district. Hillsborough County Public Schools launched a dashboard that shows 255 positive cases in students and employees since July 31. The Osceola School District posts on its website the number of students and personnel who are either quarantined or have tested positive for a given week. Orange County Public Schools releases its Covid-19 data on Facebook on Tuesdays and Fridays. The latest post cites 18 new positive cases in 17 schools since the last report and lists 61 schools that "have had a positive case associated with an individual who has been on campus since the start of face-to-face classes on August 21." Depending on how data are tracked and displayed, this piecemeal approach can make it hard to keep tabs on new cases and may not specify the schools, grades or classrooms where infected students have been. Florida's largest teacher's union in a new TV commercial is pushing the state to release comprehensive data. "As the virus spreads, those at the top aren't giving us the information we need," the narrator says in the ad. "Instead, Gov. DeSantis plays politics with our kids' health." "When we deny what's going on in the schools, ... when we deny that information, it just causes the spread to grow much faster," said Andrew Spar, Florida Education Association president. On why his administration has not released school-specific Covid-19 data, DeSantis had this to say during a September 11 news conference. "It's not like if a test is reported to the state that the state necessarily knows which school that came from. That's not the way it's going," he said in response to a question from CNN. DeSantis has asked his commissioner of education and state surgeon general to produce the information, he said. But a date for the release of the data has not been provided. (More at above url)
Florida coronavirus cases increase in children, as Governor Desantis orders some counties to keep data hidden CNN Video - https://tinyurl.com/y6adyzea
Good. There's no gain from sharing this data as Chicken Littles like you will just tell us the sky is falling. Students don't die from this virus.
And the cultists will cheer him for it as science is fake news. For latest, look no further than Caputo's (CDC abysmal pick) deranged rants exposed yesterday.
Show us an example of any other state in the U.S. where the governor has ordered schools not to share COVID data. So much for data transparency in Florida which is the very foundation of proper governance. Are you really going to continue to claim that DeSantis is less than transparent with COVID data? I find it hard to believe you don’t have a problem with this when your children attend schools in Florida.